Bob and Suzy McKinnon have been active in the Great Falls swimming community for 42 years. / TRIBUNE PHOTO/LARRY BECKNER

Written by

Jenny Kunka

For the Tribune

Bob McKinnon swam his first race in an Oregon river at the age of 6. Today he’s 75 years old and still swimming competitively.

In Great Falls, though, McKinnon’s name is synonymous with swimming lessons.

He started teaching swimming lessons in California at age 14. Now, 61 years later, he’s still teaching, with no plans to stop.

He’s been teaching kids to swim in Great Falls for 42 years.

“He’s always enjoyed the kids,” McKinnon’s wife, Suzy said. “He gradually builds their trust and over the course of the session they’re ready to dive and know he’ll help them.”

McKinnon’s father, Gus, was a YMCA coach and assistant swim coach for the University of California Golden Bears and McKinnon grew up swimming at the Y. He came to the University of Montana on a full-ride swimming scholarship and stayed in Montana, teaching English in Great Falls at Paris Gibson Junior High, followed by 28 years of teaching at CMR.

When they were still a young family, the McKinnons bought a house on 1.8 acres of land south of 10th Avenue. “It was just sand dunes when we moved here. They called it Goat Hill,” McKinnon said.

Immediately, McKinnon began to build his own swimming pool. “I was so enthusiastic I started digging the pool with a shovel,” he said. “Then I realized I wasn’t going to live long enough so I brought in a backhoe.”

With the help of friends, he soon finished the pool, “When we poured the floor, I bet there were at least 10 guys on their hands and knees helping me.”

The pool measured 45 feet by 20 feet. It was two and a half feet deep at each end so the kids could touch and four and a half feet deep in the middle. For the first two years of lessons, the pool was uncovered but the wind turned everyone blue so McKinnon built a covering.

“The pool has held up remarkably well,” McKinnon said.

That’s despite heavy use each summer. During their busiest years, the McKinnons had as many as 600 kids in their program, which ran Monday through Saturday. The McKinnon’s two children, Chris and Wendy, who were accomplished swimmers, helped teach, along with other swimmers from McKinnon’s high school teams. McKinnon remembers lessons going on at both ends of the pool and sometimes teaching for nine hours a day.

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Under McKinnon’s direction, it doesn’t take long for most beginners to jump into the water and put their heads under.

“If a kid will put his head in the water, I’ll have him swimming back and forth within eight lessons,” he said.

Kara Bell of Great Falls enrolled her son, Eric, in lessons with McKinnon after Eric had taken four sessions elsewhere. Eric had insisted that other teachers hold him in the water and he wasn’t yet independent. “Bob just looked at him and said, ‘Get in,’” Bell said. “And he did. By session two he was putting his head underwater and trying to swim on his own without help.”

Bell said that McKinnon also taught her husband. Her son knew that his dad was a good swimmer and he wanted to swim like his daddy.

Eric isn’t the first student whose parent was taught by McKinnon.

“I was shocked the first time a kid said to me, ‘Do you remember my mother?’ McKinnon said, adding that now, after 42 years of teaching, that same kid’s son will be asking, ‘Do you remember my grandmother?’”

McKinnon’s students haven’t only come from Great Falls. Small towns without swimming pools have sent groups of students to him. This resulted in groups of kids waiting for their turn, and they needed something to do so the McKinnons built a miniature golf course, complete with ponds and creek water hazards, landscaped with flowers and trees.

“The idea was that vans full of kids came here, and maybe took the entire morning as none of the kids were in the same classes and had to be scheduled in, and so the golf course kept those waiting for a lesson from tearing the place apart,” McKinnon said.

“Every time I poured a sidewalk or pool deck, I’d utilize the extra until we had 18 holes. We’d celebrated spring when the first concrete truck came each year.”

The McKinnons still have their mini golf course, but have cut down to 200 students, Monday through Thursday. They run the lessons as a partnership. Bob is the teacher and Suzy schedules, fields phone calls and does the bookkeeping. She also manages things outside the pool while the lessons are taking place.

“Suzy deserves the credit,” McKinnon said, “Summer after summer we are full not only for the next summer but sometimes the summer after that. This is successful because of her on the phone. Suzy knows swimming.”

Having spent his life swimming competitively, coaching both high school teams and community swim teams, Bob McKinnon knows swimming, too, and has taught hundreds of kids to love the water.

“I’ve done a lot of things,” McKinnon said, “But what people remember the most is the swimming lessons.”